Dream Interpretation, Therapy, Transformation

5 Keys to Having an Amazing Inner Life

Have you ever noticed how many books in the self-help sections of book stores and how many articles in magazines start with a number. Who knows really how many keys there are to having an amazing inner life? There are probably at least a billion and that would just be a start. I am going to use 5 so you as the reader don’t tire and you know when you are coming to the end, but make no mistake about it. I don’t have the slightest idea about how many keys there are. I am sure the number is infinite because it is an infinite world.

If you are a man and you are reading this article, you are so far behind almost every woman on the planet by virtue of having to grow up in a culture of Neanderthals, that you practically have no chance of catching up. The average man’s range of emotional feeling inside can be summarized in these three words, sad, glad, mad, while most women can probably name 100 emotions. As men we are taught the method of “white knuckling” negative emotions which means that you never talk about them or deal with them. You just tense up and push them down. When white knuckling doesn’t work anymore, we go to the pub. Then we create a culture around the pub that gives us permission to not deal with the inner world. Craft beer makes it seem like you are doing art when really you just are just white knuckling. Women are much freer to express emotions and work on them as they wish. If you are a man and can just add the phrase “I am feeling fear” into your repertoire of comfortable things to say, then you have made a good start to a great inner life because naming the negative emotions is where everything begins. Even if you only say it to yourself, it is good beginning. If you are a woman and you are using the white knuckling approach, it means that somehow inwardly you have given up being a woman to become a man. Big trouble!!!

If you hear voices or see strange figures or feel weird vibrations when you enter a room, you don’t have to believe that you are schizophrenic or try to shut them off. Contrary to a lot of methodology that is practiced with meditation, the goal of learning how to quiet yourself on the inside is so that you can see and hear and feel the inner world. The negative things that you are quieting are like inner voices that shut out the positive. The goal for me has never been to turn off the negative voices or pictures in the beginning. The goal is transforming the negative voices and pictures to positive ones. Going to a silent retreat and expecting to get some kind of tranquility is expecting a lot. Tranquility comes when you love what is happening on the inside.

Prayer without meditation is like trying to call your friend for help but just talking all the time or telling your friend all of your problems and asking for help and then hanging up. Meditation is the process of asking a question on the inside and then listening for an answer. Sometimes it takes awhile to get an answer.

The next world and the souls in it are closer to you than you can imagine. They are actually waiting to help you out if you ask them. It helps if you can be aware when they are around. If you don’t believe in the next world, which is true for a lot of people, then you can call on positive energy to help you which is really effective. For instance, if you need to be more discerning because you are taken advantage of easily, then call of the energy of discernment to help you. As you do it you can gradually learn how to be more discerning.

When darkness pervades your life, the goal is not to rid yourself of the darkness. The goal is to find the differentiation of the light that is trying to break through the dark areas. Spiritual energy is one like the light of the sun, but when it goes through the prism of the human world, it is differentiated into qualities like courage, honesty, peacefulness, love, compassion, and generosity. Each quality emanates from the same one spiritual source, but we need the differentiation to give light to various aspects of our lives. The qualities are like prescriptions to make each part of our lives much more effective. To have a great inner life you should always have one of the qualities that you are working on. In this way your life improves each day. Never start a day without knowing what you are going to be working on developing inside.